South West Life

You’ll have noted that we like to write positive things at South West Life. The horrible things are covered well enough by other journalists, and a good job many of them are doing it too.

So the good news in this story is - nobody died.

This past month, I’ve known a couple of people who have fallen victim to the dreaded drunk driving charge. Shut your eyes for a moment and ask yourself how well you’d get by without your licence. One of my subjects has three months to find out. The other has a few more issues.

Let’s look at the other one. Old enough to be one of my kids, this young person has gotten into life as a single, working, earning part of the South West community. There’s beaches, parties, attractive members of the opposite sex, parties, cars, parties, music, parties, oh and parties. Not a bad kid, and able to muster some very impressive character references.

Just as many of this person’s friends will do next weekend, they hooked up with some mates and went visiting the nightlife. About the time the sun was coming up two of these young workers stumbled out to the carpark. The one who lived closest to work guessed that they had least to lose if the licence went out the window, so THEY ACTUALLY DECIDED WHICH ONE OF THEM WOULD DRIVE DRUNK. Five minutes later, having picked up some just as drunk extras, bumming a lift home, they got airborne and cleaned up some of the obstacles that get foolishly left alongside roads (fences, trees, stuff like that).

The daughter of another friend happened to be on the road at the time and spent several minutes holding his head upright and screaming call the bloody ambulance while this kid’s lungs filled with blood and he drifted in and out of what she thought was going to be a long unconsciousness.

Our subject spent 8 days in intensive care, and lost a job that had taken quite some commitment to get. Worse than that, others were hurt in the accident, and contrary to expectations, got sent to jail. Yep, jail. So if collapsed lungs broken bones, unemployment and friends in surgery aren’t enough, try listening to the door clang shut behind you.

The other story is in some ways closer to home. This acquaintance and workmate is close enough that I’d call them a friend. As you do, they’d gone out and part of what became a long, really pleasant afternoon was a few drinks. My friend is a responsible person, they were aware that if you’re not careful you can wind up a statistic. So they counted, and did the things we all guess will help. The food was as good as the wine, so they ate. There was more than one glass of wine, so they drank water in between. I forgot to ask, but it’s worth betting that they sang too.

Having done what seemed to be the right thing, my friend got in the car and made the run for home. After at least 20 years on the road, damned if they didn’t run into a random breath test, and guess what, blew positive.

The story is pretty sad, you get fingerprinted, you wait IN CUSTODY, you get your photo taken, you’re not used to being the criminal so you have an expensive lawyer defend you, the prosecuting sargeant isn’t complimentary at all, the magistrate is no better, and there are no rocks to go and crawl under. At the end of it all, you’re officially what the police call a pissy driver, and you have to call your best friends and ask for lifts.

Neither story is pretty, but when two of them confronted me, it seemed a moment to say to all of us, this is no light matter. Experience says you won’t get away with it. Please take plenty of care, and lean on your kids too. At least I get to repeat that no one died, and it’s something I really want to keep saying.